by John Pearce, author of Last Stop: Paris and Treasure of Saint-Lazare

Category

Paris

I’ve split my website into two parts: the original blog, this one, and a new website for my books, which I’ve called JohnPearceBooks.com. I call the blog Part-Time Parisian because that’s what I am — an American who lives part of… Continue Reading →

The genocidal Bosnian war of the nineties has faded from Western consciousness. Not many people remember the brutal days when Sarajevo had to hang a curtain so snipers could not target civilian pedestrians, although anyone who was paying attention then… Continue Reading →

I came late to this amusing and informative book, I’m sorry to say. It’s an amazingly detailed compilation and exploration of what the French would call curiosités or choses insolites but it’s also a broad cultural overview. It’s an example… Continue Reading →

“If I flipped a franc, it would land on something worth swallowing,” David Downie writes of his arrival in Paris in 1976. He remembers, as I do, gazing into the yawning seven-story hole where Les Halles had provided food and… Continue Reading →

One of my favorite blogs is Arun With a View, an old-fashioned blog run by Arun Kapil, an American from the Midwest of Indian origin who now lives in the Paris banlieu (he’s very insistent on this description in his blog)…. Continue Reading →

We look forward to Fête de la musique every year we’re in Paris on June 21. It’s become an annual event in France and more than a hundred other countries since the French culture minister, Jack Lang, started it in… Continue Reading →

MAY 1 IS LABOR DAY in almost all of Europe (the Netherlands and Switzerland are the exceptions), and in France it’s a day for political demonstrations led by the unions or the political parties — or both. I never want to… Continue Reading →

A novel by Charles Cumming. St. Martin’s Press, Feb. 14, 2017. 356 pages. (Advance hardcover edition reviewed) Just a few months ago we thought the Cold War was long over, but now it seems to threaten us anew. Ever since John… Continue Reading →

Everyone who’s taken a Bateau Mouche ride on the Seine has seen the copy of the Statue of Liberty installed on the Isle des Cygnes, near the Grenelle Bridge. While it is a miniature of the real statue, it’s no… Continue Reading →